Matchmaker's War
by Comp Ninja
Summary: Spoiler in Ch 6 and 7. Kitsune has declared allout war on Keitaro and Naru's stubborn refusal to take their relationship to the next level.
1. Foward This Confession

Disclaimer: I do not own "Love Hina" or its characters.  
  
  
  
Matchmaker's War  
Forward This Confession  
  
  
  
You wanted to know why I beat you up, I'll try to explain. I turn red just thinking about it. It starts with those first seconds of awkward silence before I resort to violence. For those few seconds, a lot goes through my mind and one thought keeps resurfacing. /Let him./ It sounds horrible I know, but every time you have seen me or grabbed me in some inappropriate way, a part of me I think I received from Kitsune wants to encourage you to do it again and again. I feel like encouraging you to touch me and watch me in any fashion you wish. I feel utterly helpless to stop these thoughts and I tried to deny them, only to end up forcing my thoughts onto you. What kind of slut does he take me for? I would ask him.   
  
You really upset me sometimes. Even when you lose, you seem to win. I could never do that. I must have everything go my way. Naru's way or the highway. It seems no matter what the other girls do to you, you never lose your ability to dream ... and fantasize no doubt. Do I imagine things, but do I sometimes hear you mumbling my name in your sleep? Sometimes, I wonder if you even need my help getting into Toudai. You seem capable of doing anything you put your heart and soul into. You get depressed easily and that affects your work, I understand that, I've gone down that path before. But I recommend a psychologist for that, not a tutor. Look at me. I studied until it hurt and still I failed that test. Well, I didn't know how I felt about you from the moment I saw you, but I realized that I had felt love. You act like an idiot sometimes, but I truly love you and I hoped someday you feel the same way too, Keitaro. But if you don't love me, if you don't feel that way about me, do me a favor. Burn this letter. Destroy it, do what you must to forget you ever saw this letter.  
  
[Different handwriting]  
  
Kitsune made me read this letter. I didn't want to, but she insisted. I can't believe what I read. I accused Kitsune of fabrication, but I recognized the handwriting from that time I accidentally read your diary. Kitsune could have still forged your handwriting, but everyone has to take a leap of faith every once and a while, right? No better time than the present. Naru, I can't honestly believe you worry about whether I love you or not? I might panic and tell you otherwise, but I lied. I truly do love you. But not the comfortable love that someone can wait their full lives for, it feels like a burning passion I can't control or understand. I did not want to tell anyone until I understood it. That day of enlightenment seems far off now and guess I have nothing to lose just telling you everything I feel. Where should I begin?  
  
[Different handwriting]  
  
Yikes, Keitaro almost got carried away back there, but I think you get the general idea Naru and if you don't, I have a few more tricks up my sleeve. You see Naru, I went to your teen idol web-site yesterday and found a large fan-base for Naru-related material. I plan to scan a copy of this letter and forward it to a dozen of them and they plan to send it even further into the 'Net. I might even hand over a copy to the local newspaper. Heck, I might even make the front page. Underhanded, you say? Perhaps, but watching you two bicker your lives away has eaten away at my last nerve. Get over it already! As for me, do what you have to punish me for my crime, but just do what you have to in order to get together and stay together.  
  
Signed, your friendly neighborhood matchmaker,   
  
Kitsune.   
  
  
  
  
----- 


	2. Strange Encounters

Disclaimer: I do not own "Love Hina" or its characters.  
  
  
  
Matchmaker's War  
Strange Encounters  
  
  
  
Keitaro, after leaving the Sasaki Seminar, had a strange encounter with a girl that kept staring at him. As the old distinguished gentleman rambled on about some subject or another, she just kept staring. Keitaro could not keep his mind on the words the man spoke. He wanted to know why the girl did not pretend to listen like everyone else, she just kept on staring. Soon Keitaro felt a thick layer of blood rush up into his head and realized that his head must have looked with a tomato wearing glasses.   
  
/Stop staring at me!/ Keitaro felt the urge to say, but then he'd have everyone in the five-hundred-seat lecture hall filled to capacity staring at him as he yelled at an anonymous and somewhat attractive young girl. Blowing him kisses and gesturing to a newspaper in her hand, the lady seemed more than a little interested in him.  
  
/The girl must really think that little of me,/ Keitaro concluded as he continued to witness the kissing motions the girl made towards him. Perhaps this girl thinks only girls can have standards, but guys can too and Keitaro surely did have his. Imagine the guile this girl had, anyone here could easily have looked away and seen her doing this rather blatant display of affection and taken it the wrong way.   
  
/I sure hope I don't look that obvious around Naru./ The girl blew another kiss. /That does it. I don't need to stay here and take this sexual harassment./ Keitaro picked up his books and made a quiet retreat from this rather large lecture hall. No doubt, the girl followed.  
  
Keitaro tried to walk fast, trying to keep the girl's location in the corner of his eye. Like a serial killer in those American slasher movie, Keitaro started to run and made the unfortunate decision to look away from her. No sooner he taken his eyes off her, Keitaro bumped right into her. She looked bored and startled, as if she had stood waiting there for some time.  
  
"What do you want?" Keitaro asked, not bothering to sound polite to this femme fatale stalker. /Calm down, Keitaro./ Really, she looked like anything but a stalker, just a pretty nice girl with a smile from ear to ear, but her action inside the lecture hall freaked him out. When fantasy world overlapped real world, Keitaro could do only two things. One, he would enjoy himself until the dream ended. Or two, he would freak out and run for the hills, hoping he had not offended anyone. Apparently, he had decided to freak out and run for the hills.  
  
The girl's ear-to-ear smile diminished as she took a closer look at the object of her affection. "You sure don't look like burning passion." Keitaro sniffed at that comment, half confused and half angry. "In fact, you don't look like much of anything."  
  
"Hey," Keitaro retorted. "I live with three girls who says things like this to me everyday, could you give me a break and explain why you looked ready to have my children back in there."  
  
The girl stood up straight. "I most certainly don't want to 'have your children.' " She paused as if revising her next string of insults. "But you do look like a nice guy and I just thought you deserved better than that Narusegawa bitch."  
  
This put Keitaro over the edge. "Don't you dare call Narusegawa that. She has feelings too." Keitaro hated the direction he had taken this awkward conversation, but he could not let this nameless nobody insult the love of his life. "You just don't know her the way I do."  
  
"I don't know her the way you do, huh?" the girl replied, parroting his words and smiling a mischievous almost Kitsune-esque smile. "She has feelings, too, huh? Where does she keep them? In her diary? She certainly doesn't trust them with you, does she?"  
  
Keitaro wanted to end this conversation as quickly and as painlessly as his little mind could devise. Suddenly a question entered his mind. Keitaro smiled as if glad to see the question in his mind's eye coming to the rescue. This one question would steer this conversation in a better direction. "You don't like her so much, how do you know so much about her?" Ha, that should get her thinking and stopping her from talking long enough from him to make his escape.   
  
"Well, she got one thing right; you sure can act like an idiot sometimes." She unfolded the morning newspaper. "I bet you don't even read the newspaper in the morning?" Keitaro wanted to inform her that he had to cancel their subscription due to financial problems, but his not-so-witty comeback never left his mouth as he stared in utter disbelief at the headlines.   
  
[Love letter mysteriously cropping up across Tokyo]  
  
/No,/ Keitaro shouted mentally to himself. /I refuse to believe any of this./ But he had to believe, because everyone who read this newspaper would certainly believe. He could see an archived picture of himself and Narusegawa Naru over a photocopied picture of a letter he spent all of last week trying to convince himself he never saw. Keitaro felt like celebrating his moment of shock by throwing up in a nearby alley.  
  
"So, you see," she said as she folded the paper away, "I wanted to know who wrote this beautiful written expression of love. He sounds like the type of guy who would put my happiness first in front of his own, basically the opposite of my last boyfriend." The girl blushed as she realized she had let Keitaro know a little too much about her private life. "Anyway, you looked a lot like him, so I figured you might know him from somewhere."  
  
"I should," Keitaro took out his wallet and showed her his school ID.  
  
"Oh my god, you really did write this letter."  
  
"Well," Keitaro said, nervously scratching the back of his head. "I did not write all of it."  
  
"Yeah," the girl replied, snapped out of her dreamy gaze. "I skipped over her part of the letter. No offense, but that girl has a lot of issues. You would do much better with someone who doesn't try to kill you every time you get in her way." Keitaro could feel his mind drifting into forbidden territory and decided to turn away before she saw his nose bleed.  
  
"Well, can I ask you favor?" The girl smiled politely as if to say, 'Anything for Keitaro.' "Can I have that newspaper?" This enamored girl loved his writing and it hurt him to take it from her, but he needed evidence to prove later on that he had not dreamed up this surrealistic meeting. Keitaro knew only one person who would do something like this and he planned to confront her.  
  
He felt unimaginable heat rising up inside him as he could feel the girl leaning in to kiss him on the lips. Ashamed to leave without saying goodbye and good luck, Keitaro still took his opportunity to run and run he did. What took twenty minute to walk, Keitaro had dashed through in less than ten and fell in front of Hinata-sou, a heap of flesh barely moving minus the voluminous heaving of his chest as he struggled to breath.   
  
Keitaro could see the newspaper in his hand. For a moment, he hoped he just snatched some anonymous newspaper off the racks and forgot to return it. Sure, that would make him a crook, but spending a night in jail and calling his aunt Haruka to post bail seemed like a positive alternative over acknowledging the truth. Unfortunately, Keitaro could tell he had not picked up just any old newspaper. In the margins of the photocopied letter, someone had written things like, 'How cute!", "What a guy!" with an occasional 'What a bitch!'  
  
Having a great deal more self-knowledge than most people, Keitaro knew he did exactly what he did everyday when he stumbled into an uncomfortable situation; he ran until he no longer remembered what he had run away from. Looking back, he could sort of tell, with twenty-twenty hindsight, that he would do something stupid like that and should not even stopped to talk to her.   
  
"Ack, Narusegawa!" Keitaro exclaimed to himself as he snapped out his self-deprecating review of his actions. Narusegawa did not have his patience and Keitaro did not have the morbid imagination to predict what she would do if anyone showed her the morning paper. Keitaro tried with all the might his mind could muster to remember where Narusegawa had gone.  
  
"Of course," Keitaro remembered. Narusegawa had skipped the lecture to help Shinobu shop for ingredients. Keitaro pitied the first man to talk up to her thinking she would actually do the things she wrote about in her diary. He might awake up in a hospital. Or he might not wake up at all.  
  
*****  
  
Narusegawa Naru loved the direction her life had taken at the present. She had all her homework and projects done weeks ahead of schedule and Keitaro's accidents had ceased mysteriously about a week ago.  
  
Maehara Shinobu had managed to smile up at her Naru-sempai as she searched for ingredients to her special dinner planned for Seta's rescue and return to the Hinata-sou. Naru, Kitsune and Haruka nearly died of massive cardiac arrest when they heard the horrible news of the cave-in a week ago. Kitsune showed it by getting even more drunk every night, Haruka-san showed it by going through two packs of cigarettes in a single day and Naru showed it by not showing it. Unlike Haruka and Kitsune who rely on their unhealthy habits to keep themselves emotionally stable, Naru needed none of that to stay in perfect control of her emotions.  
  
Naru prided herself as Shinobu pulled at her skirt. "Sempai, can you help me pick fruits?" Shinobu pointed to the fruit stand as Naru felt a foul essence sweep through the open air market.   
  
The fruit vender smiled at her. "Do I know from somewhere?" the man asked. He spoke with an Osaka accent, like Kitsune, but his resemblance to anyone she knew ended there. He looked a bit cross-eyed and could not look straight ahead at her because of it. Still, his face had not rang any bells. Naru nodded no. The cross-eyed man grimaced weakly. "God, you look so familiar."  
  
"Perhaps, she wants you to watch her undress," a voice spoke up from behind Naru. A man, who she affectionately named Muscle Head, walked up to the vender and started to talk to him. "If you ask real nice, Naru might even let you touch her."  
  
Naru's ears perked up. As with the vender, she had never met Muscle Head before, but he seemed to know her name. /Another stalker?/ Naru wondered as she recalled how Sakata Kentaro had stalked her since her freshman year. "Yeah, she gets depressed easily, I can understand that. I recommend a psychologist, not a tutor." The two men laughed as the look of recognition came over the fruit vender's face.  
  
Surprised she had not decked him into another universe, Naru felt that their words sounded vaguely familiar. Naru also realized she did not know how to fend off a mortal man without killing him. Using Keitaro as a flesh-and-blood punching bag gave her no need for control. He could take anything she could dish out. As their laughter grew so louder and obnoxious that she could hear it ringing on the inside of her head, she zoned out everything except the sound of the laughter. She prepared herself to do whatever it took to silence the noise of their chauvinistic cackling. The last sound she remembered hearing came from a worried Shinobu.   
  
"Naru-sempai, please, don't do it."  
  
The sound of Shinobu in distress brought Naru back in time to control her own punch. In that split-second, she opened up her fist and turned her killer right hook into a backhand slap. Muscle Head fell to the ground, clutching his face and twitching in pain.   
  
"The next one will take your head off." She knew it could.   
  
The Muscle Head nodded rapidly, bowing and asking for forgiveness.   
  
The fruit vender had vanished.   
  
Naru smiled at the remaining man and decided to make the best of this awkward situation. Naru walked closer to the Muscle Head.   
  
"If you get a chance to humiliate me in public, I get a chance to humiliate you in public." Naru would enjoy this.  
  
*****  
  
Keitaro entered the open air market closest to Hinata-sou and found a crowd of people gathered around a spectacular sight. Keitaro smiled. He knew he would not arrive to a damsel in distress in need of a knight in shining armor, but she had really outdone herself this time. Keitaro looked down to see some over-sized muscle monster of a man, both hands pinned to his back and his face buried in the ground by the small almost petite redhead with a face he knew better than his own.   
  
"Sempai," Shinobu exclaimed as she ran up beside Keitaro. "Someone assaulted Naru-sempai." Keitaro felt something like that would happen. Her part of the diary made her look like some kind of slut. Frankly, he never once thought of her like that, but he could see how that would cross one's mind reading this.  
  
As Naru fumed with anger, Keitaro handed her the newspaper. "Narusegawa, I think you should read this."   
  
Naru scanned the front page. She turned red. Anger? Embarrassment? Both? Keitaro could not tell. Except for her redness, she kept her facial expressions in check. Calmly folding the newspaper, Naru handed it back to Keitaro.  
  
Naru walked up to the muscular man she had pinned to the ground. With all her might, she kicked him square in the groin. Satisfied, she walked away. She turned around and said something to Keitaro he may never forget.   
  
"I'll kill her."  
  
  
  
  
----- 


	3. The Box Named Keitaro

Disclaimer: I do not own "Love Hina" or its characters.  
  
  
  
Matchmaker's War  
The Box Named Keitaro  
  
  
  
Konno "Kitsune" Mitsune could feel her best friend sense tingling. It felt like her best friend had just wished horrible death onto her. She might want to stay away from the Hinata-sou for a couple days, at least until things blow over. Anyways, Kitsune shrugged it off as she waited inside the smoke-filled bar, trying to keep herself calm and sober. Just at that moment, Sakata Kentaro, in all his arrogant glory, sauntered in and pulled up a bar stool next to Kitsune's. "Next time I choose the meeting place," Kentaro said, giving his surroundings a weary look.  
  
"Drop dead, rich boy." Kitsune could not have less patience for anyone than she did for this overbearing self-righteous perverted slacker who just happened to have parents who made the top 100 richest people in Tokyo list. Kitsune liked money, but money made real jerks out of people who never experienced life without it.  
  
Kentaro laughed. He came in ready for a battle of wits, so he thought. "Well, that seems like that odd way to thank the man who got your bit of creative writing published in every newspaper from here to Okinawa."  
  
That thoughtless comment struck a nerve. "For the last time, I did not forge a single word. Naru wrote everything and so did Keitaro. I just filled in the afterword." Kitsune meant it. If she wanted to contribute to society's growing inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy, she would have designed a video game and left Naru and Keitaro out of this. Kitsune had found Naru writing that letter and took the initiative to force Keitaro to read it after she left. Heck, she literally had to pry his eyes open to get him to look at it. Still, he finally filled out his commentary on Naru's little hormone-charged confession and she doctored up the rest.   
  
/That way they know who to name their children after./ Kitsune thought slyly. Kitsune really doubted whether her excessive measures to crack their stubborn hides would pay off, but she had long accepted the maxim that everyone risk something just waking up every morning. Both Keitaro and Naru risked something even more dangerous and reckless than what Kitsune did. They risked never letting the other know how they truly felt about them. Naru's stubborn pride and Keitaro's fear of rejection would team up to ruin a wonderful chance at happiness and Kitsune knew it.  
  
Kentaro had ignored her comment and started to ramble on about the kind of the information the tabloids wanted about Keitaro and Naru. Kitsune had successfully zoned him out and he did not seem to notice.   
  
/Of course,/ Kitsune thought of the reasons for her sudden spark of enthusiasm to bring Keitaro and Naru together. That horrible cave-in of the dig site had left Noriyasu Seta trapped inside the cave. In three day hiatus between thinking he had died and finding out that he lived on survival rations for three days, Kitsune had imagined this scenario happening to everyone she knew. They all hurt to think about, but Naru and Keitaro's example hurt the worst. Easily, Naru could lose her glasses, step off a curb one day and get hit by a bus. Then, neither Keitaro nor Naru would ever have a chance to get to know each other's feelings for the other. Almost beaten down by this bleak epiphany, Kitsune regained her confidence and set out on her greatest campaign yet to bring Keitaro and Naru together.   
  
People cry, people live, people die. Kitsune figured this out a long time ago, but now she knew what people needed to deal with it all. They needed someone to do all the crying, living and dying with, someone who would stand by them through the good times and the bad, and pledge to their strength to each other in their times of need. Kitsune laughed at herself and that interrupted Kentaro. Little by little, the events of that week had turned her from a burn-out cynic into a born-again romantic.  
  
"So, the tabloids want to get a little background on Keitaro and Naru. Now, I supplied them with everything I know about Naru, but I know very little about Keitaro. They wondered if you could fill in the details. You remember the deal, right?" Kitsune remembered the deal and told Kentaro that she did.   
  
Relaxed now in this smoke-filled bar, Kentaro switched on a tape recorder and held it up to Kitsune. Kitsune sweat dropped. A week ago, someone asked her to describe Keitaro, she would have said idiot and left them scratching their skulls. But now, Kitsune realized they wanted to know a lot about Keitaro as an author of a love letter. Kitsune cleared her throat. "Okay, to understand Urashima Keitaro, you need to know about this promise he made fifteen years ago. Anyways, this girl came out of nowhere and told him about …"  
  
***  
  
Keitaro felt his promise sense tingling. It felt like Kitsune had just told someone about the promise he made fifteen years ago to attend Toudai with an old childhood sweetheart and find eternal happiness. While his promise sense could not (or would not) reveal the identity of the promise girl to him after fifteen years of trying, Keitaro still trusted it and expected to find the promise on the newspaper stands the following day. As Keitaro contemplated the nature of his extrasensory perception of the promise, Keitaro wondered why he never thought of publishing an ad to find his promise girl. In theory, it might work if she had moved back to Tokyo in the last fifteen years.   
  
/It happens,/ Keitaro reminded himself hopefully.  
  
Keitaro watched as Naru handed him a box. Keitaro could see his first name written on the top of the box in a flowing calligraphy, as if crafted by an artist. The box had wrapping paper on top of it, it looked very well done. "How did Kitsune do all this by herself?"  
  
Narusegawa turned her head to see the weird sight of Shinobu whistling innocently to herself and avoiding eye contact with Narusegawa. "Easy, Keitaro. She didn't. She had help." Keitaro's eyes bulged as Shinobu straightened up suddenly and kept looking back and forth between Narusegawa and Keitaro, sweat-dropping the whole time. "Shinobu, you didn't." As Narusegawa took her accusing gaze to a whole new level, Keitaro finally caught up with her observations as he looked at the exquisite wrapping job on the box again. It all made sense now.  
  
"Did you know what she had in this box?" Keitaro wanted to know just what part Shinobu had played in this one-way trip for two to the Twilight Zone.  
  
"Well," Shinobu began, taking a seat on the couch. "She had the box packed already and it looked just awful. It had tape and crumbled paper sticking out everywhere and it had your name on it, sempai. So, I thought she needed help wrapping some gift for you, so I offered to help her."   
  
Shinobu paused. "Why? What happened?" Like two parents ready to give their child the talk, Keitaro and Narusegawa wondered how much they should show and tell about these strange events. On one hand, she still had not finished junior high and perhaps, she shouldn't hear about these things until she got to Naru's age --- in about three years. On the other hand, she sort of ran the Hinata-sou single-handedly and if anyone deserved to know everything that happened under this roof, Shinobu did.   
  
Narusegawa pulled Keitaro aside and held out her hand. Keitaro shot her a confused look. "Idiot," she said. She turned her hand into a rock, then a paper, and then a pair of scissors. "Rock-paper-scissors, I win, we don't tell Shinobu … yet. You win, we tell her everything." Three shakes and Naru and Keitaro drew.  
  
***  
  
/Rock breaks scissors. Beginner's luck,/ Naru brooded as Keitaro handed Shinobu the newspaper. Naru used to play this game all the time as a child. Now, she remembered why she had quit. /Next time, don't throw scissors,/ she scolded herself as Shinobu finished the love letter.  
  
Shinobu's eyes made swirling patterns before she passed out onto the couch. Naru and Keitaro drew a sheet over the unconscious Shinobu. Naru wondered if Keitaro and her would ever have a child as well-behaved and pleasant as Shinobu.   
  
/What the heck?/ Naru felt like hitting herself in the head. /Hey, stop that, brain. I do not want to have this pervert's children. I don't want anything to do with him, you hear me?/ As Naru fought an epic battle against her rebellious brain, Keitaro said something she only imagined ever hearing from Keitaro.  
  
"Hey, Naru, want to go on a date?"  
  
Naru felt the ground vanish from under her as she heard those words. Like Keitaro stuck between his real life and one of his many fantasy lives, Naru could not believe her ears. "Well, I guess we could try. I mean, why not? Kitsune went to a lot of work to get us together, so maybe we should just try it out. Just don't do anything perverted." Naru turned to walk away.  
  
"Good," Keitaro said, pointing to the box named Keitaro he had just opened. "Because Kitsune rented us a limo and got us reservations at one of the finest restaurants in Tokyo. And look." Keitaro held up a fist full of yen, a goofy smile planted on his face. "Money!"  
  
Narusegawa scratched her head. How did Kitsune pull this off? No matter, Narusegawa waited for Keitaro to leave. As he left, Narusegawa came back in doing cartwheels across the wooden floors, celebrating this historical moment in her life. Tonight, she would have her first date. Her first date with Urashima Keitaro.   
  
The sound of someone giggling their heart out snapped Naru out of her improvised happy dance. She looked back and saw Shinobu, still asleep, but now with a smile on her face. /Smiles look good on Shinobu,/ Naru noticed. /She should smile more often./   
  
Naru tucked in Shinobu's sheets and kissed her on the cheek.   
  
"Sleep tight."  
  
  
  
  
----- 


	4. You Will Get Nothing

Disclaimer: I do not own "Love Hina" or its characters.  
  
  
  
Matchmaker's War  
You Will Get Nothing  
  
  
  
"Never expected to find you here. How things going with Naru? Okay?"  
  
Kentaro grinned faded as Keitaro clinched his fist. "Sakata Kentaro." /You son of a bitch./ Keitaro still hated Kentaro for what he put his beloved Narusegawa through. While he long suspected that Narusegawa Naru had that effect on lots of men besides himself, he did not consider stalking her since her freshman year a healthy way to deal with those feelings.   
  
Keitaro scanned the area to remember his current location. Indeed, he looked out of place dressed so casually in this tuxedo store. Worried about what these casual clothes might look like in one of Tokyo's finest restaurants, Keitaro had taken measures for a tuxedo. Since he needed for tonight, he had paid them extra to deliver the suit to the Hinata-sou by seven o'clock.  
  
"Well, I need a tuxedo for tonight." Keitaro said. He then considered his second question. "And none of your business."  
  
Kentaro shrugged off his rudeness, turned away, and continued talking to Keitaro with his back turned to him. "You plan to take Narusegawa on a date to one of the finest restaurants in Tokyo and you need something to wear, right?" Keitaro's anger subsided to confusion. This man knew more about Narusegawa and him that any newspaper could have told him.   
  
"How did you know that?" /Tell me before I rip your lungs./ Keitaro's anger returned with a vengeance. Now he understood what Narusegawa's anger felt like and how it could make you feel so weak and invincible at the same time.  
  
"Honestly, Urashima Keitaro does not have a reputation for his intelligence, but did he really think Kitsune could afford all this without a little help?" Kentaro smirked at the witticism of his last comment.   
  
The rusty gears in Keitaro's head started to turn as he realized that Kitsune could not have arranged all this by herself, even she had years to plan for it, which she did not. "You helped."   
  
Kentaro applauded Keitaro with a mock congratulatory clap. "Bravo, well done. Perhaps, I misjudged you. You seem quite clever and determined to win Naru over. I applaud your persistence. Persistence usually pays off."   
  
This former stalker talked to Keitaro with an informal tone that made him feel somewhat connected this reverse mirror image of himself. "Why do you want to help Narusegawa and me get together?" Keitaro hated asking open-ended questions like that. It always gave them the opportunity to ramble on about whatever came into their twisted minds, but his curiosity and ability to think logically demanded a reason for why a man, who had so desperately wanted Narusegawa for himself, would commit social suicide by aiding to his competition. He just had to know.  
  
"Help, you say?" Kentaro turned his head and zeroed his soulless eyes onto Keitaro, as if searching for answers inside of Keitaro's eyes. "I can see it your eyes, Keitaro. You can't take much more of this. You can't handle the publicity the way I can, can you?"   
  
Kentaro leaned menacingly closer to him. Keitaro fought back the urge to run away from him. This pathetic excuse for a human being did not deserve to see him running scared. "Yes, I can see it clearly now. It doesn't matter how much money or free gifts Kitsune extorts out of me for this little project of hers, you know. I know you will find a way to disappoint Naru." Kentaro stepped in closer. Keitaro could taste him breathing down his neck. "And when Naru needs a shoulder to cry on, I will get the girl and you will get nothing."  
  
Suddenly Sakata Kentaro staggered to the ground, grasping the side of his face and trembling in shock. Surprised, Keitaro almost bent over and asked him why he had fallen over until he saw his own right hand. As if on its own accord, it had flung a fist into the air and bashed it right into Kentaro's left cheek. Keitaro marveled at how well his right side of his body had concealed its actions from the left side. It had not even felt his right hand leave his side, much less form a fist and send that very fist colliding into Kentaro's face.  
  
Sakata brought his trembling under control. "Whoa. You have a quite a right hook there, Urashima. You must have picked up a couple pointers from Naru, no doubt."  
  
"You better get out of here before I do it again." Keitaro did not mean to sound like a threat, he honestly believed he could not bring his possessed right arm under control if Kentaro stuck around much longer.   
  
Obviously upset that he could get the last word, Kentaro stumbled away. Keitaro briefly worried about whether or not Kentaro would sue him for assault and battery, but fear quickly gave way to his self-loathing. Like a lot of people who resorted to violence at one point of their lives or another, Urashima Keitaro did not think of himself as the violent type and neither did anyone else who knew him. But, like anyone driven to violence, one could never quite know what pushes them over the edge until someone tries them. Kentaro had tried him and he had walked away with his left cheek and most certainly his pride bashed in beyond recognition.   
  
Still, Urashima Keitaro's violent outburst only served to burn Sakata Kentaro's last words into his mind. /You will get nothing./ Those words did not him as much as Kentaro's suggestion that he would find a way to disappoint Narusegawa. That worried Keitaro more than anything. Disappointing the true love of his life.  
  
***  
  
Maehara Shinobu yawned and awoke from her little post-breakfast nap refreshed. Shinobu had a wonderful dream that Keitaro had asked Naru on a date and after Keitaro left, Naru started doing cartwheels across the wooden floors. The image of the subdued Naru doing cartwheels had done something unusual to Shinobu. It made her laugh. After that, she slept like a baby until the sound of someone slamming a door rustled Shinobu from her slumber.  
  
Shinobu, not given to eavesdropping like Kitsune, left a vacuum in the position of information gatherer and all-around eavesdropper. After living at the Hinata-sou for so long, Shinobu recognized that everyone living there made up part of a crucial balancing act that kept the Hinata-sou a healthy and happy place to live. And without the element of a Kitsune present, things would start to unravel pretty quickly. So, in spite of herself, Shinobu listened into the conversation Naru and Keitaro had.  
  
"Hey, Keitaro, where did you get cuts on your knuckles from?" Shinobu looked through the cracks to see what Naru meant by cuts. Shinobu's virgin eyes bulged out of proportion as she saw layer of tore flesh on top of Keitaro's delicate hands. It looked like Keitaro had scraped his hands against a shard of glass. Shinobu had done that once to her knuckles, it hurt for weeks. If it hurt Keitaro, he definitely kept it from coming out on his face. In fact, Keitaro seemed desperately trying to ignore the large chunks of torn flesh on his right hand. Weird.  
  
"Well, Naru, I had a run-in with a certain stalker with a big mouth. Things got carried away." Narusegawa's eyes had widened as quickly as Shinobu's did. Every girl in Tokyo, from junior high upward, knew about the antics of that self-obsessed stalker and Shinobu knew that if anyone on Earth could drive her normally passive sempai to violence, Sakata Kentaro could.   
  
When she married, she plan to steer clear of men like Kentaro and pick out husbands from men more than Keitaro. Of course, she knew very few men like Urashima Keitaro, but she had resolved to play the odds she might meet a long lost twin brother of his someday and live happily ever after than risk interfering with Keitaro's feelings for Naru. Shinobu lived the life of the housekeeper, always endeavoring to keep everyone happy and under the same roof together.  
  
As she saw the clock, Maehara Shinobu panicked. She had less than an hour to prepare lunch, she had slept for three hours. Shinobu scampered off to the kitchen and started reading the love letter to herself mentally as she gathered ingredients, especially the part that Keitaro wrote. Her sempai had a beautiful rapport with the written word that made Shinobu wondered if anyone would ever feel that strongly towards her as Keitaro felt towards Naru. Shinobu could only dream.   
  
***  
  
Narusegawa Naru thought she had heard someone listening in on her, but with Kaolla, Sarah and Kitsune gone, she had little fear of eavesdroppers. Realizing all this, she shook the feeling off as she revised as Keitaro's mangled right hand, making [tsk tsk tsk] noises the whole thing. If Keitaro ever needed to punch someone again, he would do better next time if he learned how to form a fist properly.   
  
"Keitaro, make a fist." Keitaro stared helplessly at Naru as he flexed his right hand. "I meant your left hand, idiot." Naru did not really mean to insult him, but seeing Keitaro struggle in pain to move his right hand hurt her in more ways that even Keitaro could imagine. "Now, keep your thumb tucked in. You don't want it sticking out during a punch, it might get torn off." Naru stared at Keitaro with deadpan honesty.  
  
Keitaro looked back inquisitively at Naru. "How do you know that, Narusegawa?" Naru showed Keitaro her right hand and allowed him to notice the near invisible line where the surgeons had reattached her thumb when she punched a cement wall with a bad fist. When it happened, she still hadn't quite grasped the basics that Noriyasu Seta taught her, but two weeks of practice had made her feel invincible.   
  
/Oh my god, Seta-san!/ All this rushing around to get dressed and plan the date completely blocked out the fact that Seta would arrive at eight o'clock tonight expecting a big party. With Naru, Keitaro, and the master of ceremonies Kitsune gone, it left only Motoko, Kaolla, Haruka, Sarah, Shinobu and possibly Mutsumi to orchestrate a big party.  
  
As Keitaro practiced punching, trying to keep his thumb for straying from the other four fingers, Naru grabbed Keitaro and violently shook. "Keitaro, do you know what we have forgotten?"  
  
Keitaro, dizzy from all the shaking, replied. "No, Naru, what did we forget?" Naru loved this man, but if he could not remember something he heard about two days ago, he would definitely forget big things, like anniversaries for sure.   
  
/Anniversaries? Oh no! Not again. Stop that in there./ Naru's untamed brain had once again made veiled references to marrying Keitaro. She blamed part of it on Kitsune and part of it on herself. Thinking back to the day she met this unimpressively looking ronin, she had always thoughts about making a husband out of Urashima Keitaro, but now that Kitsune had given Keitaro a better clue to how Naru felt about him, these thoughts occurred in greater frequency and intensity.  
  
Naru's ego and her wild id declared a seize-fire and she continued where she had left off. "We forgot to plan a party for Seta-san." Keitaro's eyes bugged out.   
  
"Well," Keitaro said, panicked and bewildered, "Perhaps, we should call of the date help plan the party for Seta." She could see it in his eyes that he meant it. /Urashima Keitaro doesn't have a selfish bone in his body,/ Naru concluded quite confidently. But still, Kitsune put a lot of time and effort into this and surely she had anticipated every possible eventuality to a fine stroke in her masterpiece to unite Keitaro and her. Nothing this big and obvious would have gone unnoticed by her perspective best friend whom she still planned to kill next time the two met.   
  
Suddenly, Naru realized that Kitsune had something planned for Noriyasu Seta. The legacy of Kitsune lived on. "Keitaro," Naru called to Keitaro. "I think I know what Kitsune has planned for Seta-san. It involves your aunt, Haruka-san."  
  
Keitaro froze up and jeered his head at Naru. "My aunt and Seta? What does she have planned."  
  
Naru brainstormed a bit. "Perhaps, Kitsune did not want a big party for Seta. Perhaps, she wanted a small candlelight dinner for Seta-san and Haruka-san." Naru could imagine the great matchmaker spirits smiling happily at her brilliant deductions and she continued on. "Perhaps, she wants to bring Haruka-san and Seta-san together like us."  
  
"It makes sense. But I doubt they will spend a quiet evening at the Hinata-sou." Keitaro's eyes gave no clues to what he meant by that.  
  
"What do you mean?" Keitaro rarely ever skipped ahead of her superior thinking processes until after he read Naru's part of the letter a week ago. Apparently, having his instincts confirmed on the front page of a newspaper had instilled him with great confidence. "Why would they go anywhere else?"  
  
Keitaro shook his head to clear up a misunderstanding. "No, Narusegawa, I didn't say they wouldn't spend the evening somewhere. They will spent the evening at the Hinata-sou, I just doubt they'll do it quietly."   
  
Keitaro tried to gesture with his mangled right hand what he meant, but Naru had finally caught up by then. "Oh, I see." The chances of a romantic night together getting carried away had never occurred to Narusegawa. "What should we do? We can't have the other girls in the same house with those two." Naru could literally see the gears turning in Keitaro's head.  
  
"Perhaps, Mutsumi has room for them in her apartment."  
  
"Would she do that for us?" Mutsumi owned a large apartment in the other side of the town, but would she sacrifice all that free space for them.  
  
Keitaro almost laughed at the question. "You kidding, Narusegawa? She would do anything for us." Keitaro put special emphasis on the word 'us.' After Kitsune, Mutsumi had put forth, in her own distracted way, the second most effort of the all the girls to lure these two lovebirds to their honeymoon suites. Shinobu ranked third on the list and most of the other girls just watched in suspense to see how those two would manage.  
  
"And Naru?" Keitaro started to wobble again.  
  
"Yes, Keitaro?" Keitaro might have another idea to give her.  
  
"All this dizzy made me thinking," Keitaro spoke nonsensically as he collapsed onto Narusegawa, grabbing hold of her breasts. Confused on what to do after a week free of accidents, Naru felt the familiar tide of thoughts and emotions come over her during those torturously awkward moments. When the less civil thoughts broke through, Naru almost decided to banish them with a single stroke from her super punch. But other thoughts now greeted her in these unnaturally long seconds of thought. Keitaro had clocked Kentaro earlier today and Naru felt that her violent temper might have had a bad influence the primarily non-violent Urashima Keitaro.   
  
Still, Keitaro needed to understand the error of his ways and not view these perverted accidents as an acceptable norm. Keitaro stared in anticipation of what Naru would do next thing. If he trusted his instincts, he probably expected to find himself flying to Mutsumi's apartment any second now. If he listened to the love letter, he probably expected some pretty raw hentai things to follow soon. Naru could not let either extreme happen. Not yet anyways.  
  
"Urashima," Naru spoke grimly and clearly. "Get … your … hands … off … of … my … breasts!" Naru had literally screamed that last part and sent Keitaro flying from the mere force of her words. His hands came undone from Naru almost instantaneously.   
  
"Good boy," she said calmly, almost petting Keitaro behind the ears. "And Keitaro." She turned away. "Catch!" Naru fired a fairly fast punch to Keitaro's head. Done as she had told him to, Keitaro moved out of the way and caught the fist in his mangled right hand. Signs of pain appeared on his face. "Good reflexes," Naru complimented him, "you should block more often." Naru never realized the kind of control she had over Keitaro. All this time, Naru had had a puppeteer's handle on Keitaro and only now had she, the puppeteer, started to notice the strings.   
  
"Of course," Keitaro said, his face turning unnaturally pale. "I would never do anything to disappoint you, Narusegawa." That last line confused Naru. It made no sense in the context of anything they said before, but Naru ignored it. She needed to invest her mental energy elsewhere. Right now, they had two romantic dinners to plan and four tenants to relocate, all this within eight hours. Keitaro and Naru had no time to lose.   
  
  
  
  
  
----- 


	5. Panic Attack

Disclaimer: I do not own "Love Hina" or its characters.  
  
  
  
Matchmaker's War  
Panic Attack  
  
  
  
Keitaro wanted to believe that he just had a heart attack. But heart attacks don't have hot flashes and sudden chills. He even considered whether or not the restaurant had poisoned his food. A feeling of impending doom swept over Keitaro's mind and spirit, but he could not believe a poison would have worked, since nothing physical could harm the immortal Urashima Keitaro. His heart seemed to struggle to break free of his chest. Still, he did everything he could to hide the truth from himself as he struggled to breath. A hour away from Narusegawa's tender embrace, Keitaro had had a panic attack. As his world turned black, he thought back to how this could have happened.   
  
***  
  
Keitaro had gotten his tuxedo at seven o'clock sharp and everything looked ready for the perfect night on the town. Narusegawa had treated him very well and Keitaro blushed over how close him and Narusegawa had grown thanks to Kitsune's intervention. To repay her, they did some matchmaking of their own, bringing together Noriyasu Seta and Urashima Haruka for an evening alone at the Hinata-sou. The turtle mecha perimeter created by Kaolla would keep the media out and Mutsumi would provide the other girls with a place to stay in the meanwhile.  
  
Narusegawa wore a beautiful red dress that put every other dress he had ever seen before to shame. And, on a personal note, it looked great on Narusegawa's body. Keitaro wanted to tell Narusegawa that, but even with their deepest darkest emotions out in the open for everyone to read, Keitaro still felt years of rejection and alienation from other females reminding him to slow down and take his time with Narusegawa.  
  
First, Narusegawa wanted a traditional date besides the fancy restaurant and hotel room waiting for them on the other side of town. So, naturally, Keitaro and Narusegawa went to see a movie.   
  
The movie had a pretty standard plot, something about a boy and a girl who pretty hate each other on the outside, but can't stop obsessing over each other on the inside. Keitaro and Narusegawa spent the whole movie blushing at how many parallels these fictional characters had to their own twisted love affair. The movie always left them upset watching these two miserable characters. Yes, they had the happy ending and everything, but they wasted a lot of time just bickering over the stupidest things. If those two could just relax and get over their differences like civilized people, their romance would not have taken so long to resolve. Granted the movie would not have lasted as long, but Keitaro grew almost as annoyed as Narusegawa. The scriptwriters had stumbled upon the most ridiculous reasons to pull this perfect couple apart and even stranger reasons to bring them back together again for the big finale.  
  
Needless to say, the movie exhausted Narusegawa and Keitaro mentally. But Keitaro had enjoyed it. He understood much better now why Kitsune could not let Narusegawa and him have their privacy. Sometimes, everyone needed to take a leap of faith, even if someone had to push them over the edge to do it.  
  
"Perhaps, we should leave?"   
  
As soon as Narusegawa spoke those words, Keitaro felt stabbing pain. /Why do I feel this stabbing pain in my chest./ Keitaro staggered to the ground, pulling the tablecloth from the table onto him. Kentaro's words shot through Keitaro's heart. He could not understand what had happened to him. /Have I found that one in a million ways to disappoint Naru?/   
  
Narusegawa's hurt and tortured look on her face confirmed his suspicions. He had disappointed Naru, but why? Why? Keitaro's mind opened and revealed an answer that sickened Keitaro.   
  
The thought of the future scared Keitaro. He lived in the past, living off a promise he refused to let go of. Keitaro could picture the events of the next hour with feverish clarity. Soon, Narusegawa and Keitaro would have a hotel room together. Keitaro would offer to tie himself to the bed and Narusegawa would offer to do it for him. The rest would follow like a wonderful dream. But like any dream, Keitaro would awaken and realize he did not deserve the dream.   
  
Keitaro could never give his all to Narusegawa as long as that promise lingered in the background, constantly pulling him away from the present. As long as the mystery of the promise remained a mystery, Urashima Keitaro would find a way to disappoint Naru in his single-minded search for the promise girl. Keitaro could not live with himself if he did that.   
  
While Keitaro knew that panic attacks strike without warning, Keitaro could now clearly see where the pressure rose from. Despite all this insight, during the panic attack itself, Keitaro had not thought any of this. Out of nowhere, his heart erupted into a full-blown panic. Soon after that, the world seemed to come to end for Keitaro. That panic swallowed his mind and spread to his lungs, as he heaved for air. The lungs would not move. Keitaro blanked out.  
  
***  
  
Narusegawa had stood over Keitaro and wondered what had happened to him. Everything seemed to have gone quite fine and then suddenly Keitaro hit the ground and stopped breathing. With the help of the restaurant manager, Narusegawa got hold of an ambulence and had Keitaro rushed to the nearest hospital. Narusegawa rode along, holding onto Keitaro's hand the whole time.   
  
Several hours passed and sometime during the endless night of fearing for Keitaro's life, the sun rose. The sun looked really different to eyes that spent the evening crying. An elderly man in a medical suit approached Narusegawa Naru. "You, Narusegawa Naru?" Naru nodded in reply. Now, she would know what had happened to Keitaro. "Urashima Keitaro seemed to have suffered an intense anxiety attack."  
  
"A panic attack?" Naru asked. Somewhere inside her, she knew that she could not have caused a panic attack. Panic attacks happened without warning or reason. Though, they tend to happen at crucial transition points in people's lives. And Naru had completely resolved to put Keitaro and herself through a crucial transition point in both their lives as soon as they reached the hotel room.   
  
Blushing, she wondered where she had gotten the courage to try something like that. But Naru could not shake the feeling that Keitaro had rejected her and expressed his decision in the form of a panic attack.  
  
The medic looked up. "Does 'the promise girl' mean anything to you?" Naru nodded her head. For a while, Keitaro had suspected Naru of having made the promise to get into Toudai with him fifteen years ago. She had explained to him in less than flattering terms that she could not have made the promise, because she could barely talk fifteen years ago. "Well, he kept repeating that over and over again in his sleep. I thought he might have meant you."  
  
Tears fell from Narusegawa's eyes. "So did I." Narusegawa understood what had happened to Keitaro. Before he had always mumbled her name in his sleep. /So?/ Narusegawa asked herself. /He finally made his choice. He will have the promise girl and no other girl except the promise girl./ The realization rocked Narusegawa. /Why? Why?/ All her pent-out frustration and anger exploded from her hand and connected with the nearby wall. She looked out of the hole as the wall fragments descended the three floors to the ground and landed with an abrupt [crack].   
  
Narusegawa wished that she and Keitaro could both die and get reincarnated, so that way they could start this all over again from the beginning. In one of those lifetimes, perhaps, her and Keitaro might finally get it right.   
  
Narusegawa looked down to see a crowd gathering. Some of the people thought she might jump. Little by little, the idea started to sound quite attractive. Her current love-interest had given his heart to the promise girl and her former love-interest had promised his heart to Haruka-san. She had no one left to turn to, but herself and she did not know if she could spent the rest of her life with the girl that let Keitaro get away.   
  
Narusegawa split in two. One half of her wanted to continue on without Keitaro and the other would not stand for it. The two halves of her splintered psyche played the game of rock-paper-scissors to determine her future. Rock breaks scissors. She lost. At that time, Narusegawa decided she would jump, but not from here. She would return to where all this madness originated from, the source of this chaos. The Toudai campus.  
  
  
  
  
----- 


	6. Scissors Cut Paper

Disclaimer: I do not own "Love Hina" or its characters.  
  
  
  
Matchmaker's War  
Scissors Cut Paper  
  
  
  
"Mutsumi, I need to know exactly what happened fifteen years ago and I need to know now." During the longest night of his life, Urashima Keitaro had made the biggest decision of his life. He needed to find the promise girl, but not to fulfill his promise, but to renounce it.   
  
He would tell her he could not keep his promise to her anymore. He would tell her he had found his eternal happiness in someone else. And Keitaro wanted to meet the promise girl and tell her this straight to her face, not just to himself in a hospital bed. "Now I know you have trouble remembering exact details, but I need you to remember everything."  
  
Before his very eyes, Otohime Mutsumi shape-shifted. One moment, he saw the same confused and distracted girl he saved from getting hit by a bus once and the next he saw a completely different girl, one with a look of determination on her face. Clearly, Mutsumi had waited for this moment for a long time. "Kei-kun, I have deceived you. I remember everything so very clearly." Mutsumi looked away and stared out the window. "I always wanted tell you and Naru-chan the truth, but I had no idea whether it would bring you two together or pull you two apart."   
  
Keitaro agreed with Mutsumi's reasoning. Kitsune had plotted to bring these two together and their perfect date ended in disaster. A medic said he saw Narusegawa Naru leaving this hospital in tears an hour ago after she punched a hole through the wall. Narusegawa had not taken the news of his panic attack with grace and Keitaro feared that Narusegawa may never speak to him again. No one could ever quite know what brought people together and what could tear them apart. But this, keeping the story from him all this time hurt Keitaro's trust in Mutsumi. Now, he knew why she behaved the way she did around Narusegawa and him. She behaved confused and distracted because she had something to hide from them.  
  
Mutsumi swallowed hard and began her story. "Ara ara ara. I have a complex story to tell, you might want to keep an open mind. Where should I begin? Oh, yes, scissors cut paper." From there, Mutsumi attempted to start the story just as two familiar faces burst through the door.  
  
In the room now stood two people. One had a bandage over the whole left side of his face and hid behind the other person, keeping his distance from Keitaro. Sakata Kentaro looked a little scared to see Keitaro again so soon. The other person, rarely ever known for opening her eyes or showing fear, had a wide-eyed look of panic on her face. Konno "Kitsune" Mitsune looked just as scared as Kentaro, but for reasons other than fear of getting punched out.   
  
"Oh my god, I really screwed up this time." Kitsune put herself against a wall and started cradling herself in a fetal position, weeping uncontrollably. Something had spooked the fearless Kitsune and that sent a shiver down Keitaro's spine. "I should never interfered. I should never have started all this. If I knew it would lead to this, I would never have even tried."  
  
Keitaro fought back the shivering of his spine to ask a question. "Lead to what, Kitsune? Tell us." Keitaro could feel another panic attack coming on and intercepted it.   
  
/Breath in, breath out, breath in, breath out./   
  
In moments, Motoko's suggested breathing exercise had calmed his nerves enough to remain conscious.  
  
Kitsune had stopped crying and stared at the opposite wall as if comatose. It seemed like she had lost her way in the strangest and most unfamiliar part of the woods and did not know the way back to the main trail.   
  
Kentaro spoke up as Kitsune sat against the wall. "Kitsune and I just got news of someone on top of the Tokyo University clock tower prepared to jump. She looks serious and earlier reports describe her as small redhead who fought through a couple of guards with a series of powerful right hooks." Keitaro finally knew what it took to make the fearless Kitsune doubt herself. In her mind, she believed that her meddling and interloping had driven her best friend to suicide.   
  
Keitaro needed to think fast. Keitaro walked up to Kentaro and punched him in the gut. "Okay, Kentaro, I hit you twice already. " Keitaro hoped this would work. The plan brewing in his mind would only work if he had his strength. "Now you can hit me as many times as you want." With virtually no hesitation, Kentaro delivered five or six extremely hard and fast punches to Keitaro. Keitaro went flying up against the wall and left a mark in the plaster. Keitaro checked himself over. Keitaro could feel a few bruises. He had not fully regained his strength, but this would have to do.   
  
"Everyone, get over here." Motoko, Kaolla, Sarah, and Shinobu joined them in the room. " Mutsumi has an interesting story to tell all of us. Listen carefully."   
  
Kentaro tapped Keitaro on the shoulder. He had something to say. "Keitaro, the girl can tell us her story on the way there." Keitaro's plan suddenly left apart in the department of transportation. It would take too long to reach the clock tower on foot or by car from this part of Tokyo. Even when they got there, no one would let him on the roof without a fight. Keitaro stared at Kentaro worriedly. Kentaro, as if by telepathy, knew precisely what to say. "Don't worry. I have a helicopter. I can get you there and on the roof in five minutes." Keitaro smiled his plan had direction again. And Mutsumi began her story once began.  
  
"Wait!" Keitaro said. "We should call the Hinata-sou and get Haruka-san and Seta-san here."  
  
"We can't." Sarah McDougal dialed the number of the Hinata-sou on a nearby phone. "We did not even get a dial tone. We can't find Haruka at the teahouse either and I think Papa took the phone off the hook." That could mean only thing. This made Keitaro smile. At least someone's night turned out as planned.   
  
***  
  
/Scissors cut paper./ Narusegawa Naru did not understand this thought that came surfacing in her mind. Like a broken record, it just repeating over and over again, as if repetition would make it sound more clear and obvious.   
  
/No, shut up. I have made my decision./ Naru would not let a mirage of hope pull her away from this ledge. The next time she left this ledge, she would do it to jump, nothing could stop her now. Now, she understood life's cruelty, life's sadist thirst for pain. It always gave just enough hope to a person to keep them from ending it all and force them to endure the torments of the unfair and cold-hearted conditions of one's life. Naru could tell Life wanted her live another day, suffer another great humiliation, endure another unspeakable pain.   
  
/Not this time, Life. I know your game, you can't fool me this time./ Still, no matter how much she tried to ignore Life's trickery, the phrase kept repeating over and over again, still in that tone to tell her it had something important to say. Why did it matter what the voice said? Keitaro had chosen the promise girl and Naru could not compete with her. The promise girl did everything right and had treated Keitaro with the respect he deserved. She had placed her claim on Keitaro first and she doubted she would give that away to just anyone, especially to a violent, psychotic, suicidal freak like herself. Still, it kept going despite her protest. In the distance, the sound of helicopter entered her ears.  
  
/Scissors cut paper./  
  
***  
  
Urashima Keitaro's eyes swirled as Otohime Mutsumi completed her story. Over the noise of the helicopter engine, Keitaro had only managed to make out the basics. From what he could hear, Keitaro understood another reason why Mutsumi waited so long to tell her story.   
  
/Unbelievable!/ Keitaro thought. /Who would have ever guessed that?/ As unbelievable as it sounded, the story did explain why his mind refused to give him a name or a face. If he had remembered the girl's name and face, Keitaro would have mistaken Mutsumi for the promise girl. That would just made things worse. Much worse.  
  
Keitaro gathered his strength as Kentaro landed the helicopter right next where Narusegawa Naru waited, standing from the ledge of the clock tower, ready to end her life and end both of their chances at eternal happiness. Keitaro wanted to go alone, but no one would let him. They promised to stay quiet unless spoken to, but they needed to come with Keitaro as he tried to talk Narusegawa down from the ledge. If something physically went wrong, Keitaro knew what to do, but he might not know what to do if Narusegawa left him without any words.  
  
"Narusegawa."  
  
"Keitaro."  
  
Keitaro groaned. Narusegawa had not even looked away to talk to him. This discouraged Keitaro at first, but soon gave him hope. If she did not look at him, he could still come close enough to her to pull her off the ledge. Thinking this, Keitaro took one step towards Narusegawa. "Narusegawa, you don't have to do this."   
  
/Yeah, original, Keitaro./ Giving Narusegawa the standard "you have everything to live for" speech would only further upset Narusegawa. She had nothing to live for. News that he had repeated the words 'promise girl' in his sleep left her thinking he had chosen the promise girl over her, he just knew it. To doubt her sincerity to kill herself, Keitaro would have to doubt the sincerity of her love for him. And Keitaro just couldn't do that.  
  
"Narusegawa, I know what you came up here to do and I know I can't stop you." Keitaro choked back a lump in throat. Did he have the courage to say this? "If you jump, I'll jump in after you." There, he said.  
  
Maehara Shinobu stepped out of line and came closer to Narusegawa and Keitaro. "Naru-sempai, if Sempai jumps in after you, I'll jump in after him." Shock followed, then someone else stepped out of line.  
  
Aoyama Motoko had stepped out of line. "It may cost me my honor and may never see my beloved dojo again, but if Shinobu jumps, I'll jump in after her."  
  
Everyone except Narusegawa stared at Su Kaolla wrapped around Motoko's neck. "I won't let go," Kaolla announced defiantly.  
  
Sarah McDougal's eyes bulged. "If Kaolla wouldn't let go, I won't let go either." Sarah grabbed on to Motoko's right leg.  
  
Otohime Mutsumi stood out of line. "Ara ara ara. I guess I have lived a good life. If Motoko manages to jump in after Shinobu with Kaolla around her neck and Sarah around her leg, I will jump in after all of them. I swear it."  
  
Everyone (except Narusegawa) turned to face Kitsune. "You kidding?" Everyone grimaced. They thought she would back down. "In a heartbeat, Naru-chan. For my best friend, not even a question, I'd do it."  
  
Kentaro sweat-dropped as everyone (except Narusegawa) turned to look at him. "Wow, Naru, you have some amazing friends. I'd never do that for anyone, not even for you." Apparently ashamed of his own confessed cowardice, Sakata Kentaro retreated to the safety of the helicopter.  
  
"You see, Narusegawa." Keitaro took a step closer. "If we don't figure out our differences soon, we'll set off a mass suicide."  
  
"Stop playing games, Keitaro. And that goes for all of you. You and me have serious problems. And you haven't thought them through. I mean, what about your panic attacks?" Keitaro could see Narusegawa shuddering in exquisite pain. "Can't exactly bring them on the honeymoon with us, can we?"  
  
"I freaked out. I'll admit it. I freaked out. I freaked out because I still needed to know the truth behind the promise after all these years." Keitaro caught his breath. "Narusegawa, I know the truth about the promise, now. I know the identity of the promise girl. I have something important to tell her."  
  
Keitaro cleared his throat and took a step forward. "Promise girl," he said to Narusegawa. "Sorry. I can't keep my promise to you. I met someone else. She might act mean sometimes, but I know deep down she will give me the eternal happiness I have spent my whole life searching for. Sorry, promise girl. I can't."  
  
"What?" Narusegawa turned to face Keitaro, her back now to the edge. Halfway through his speech, she must have realized the implication of Keitaro addressing her as the "promise girl."  
  
Keitaro felt a surge of confidence. He had gotten Narusegawa's attention. "Narusegawa, you made a promise fifteen years ago, a different promise from the one me and Mutsumi made." Keitaro clinched his teeth. "But a promise nonetheless." Now, he would reiterate the unbelievable part of the story Mutsumi had told him.   
  
/I hope this works./  
  
"You and Mutsumi made a promise. She said you couldn't talk very well, so you challenged her to a game of rock-paper-scissors. You two promised whoever won the next game would win something incredible." Keitaro could feel his pulse racing. "Mutsumi knew you always throw scissors, so she threw paper. Scissors cut paper. She let you win. Do you remember what you won?"  
  
Narusegawa nodded her head. Keitaro could tell she did not have the faintest clue. "Me, Narusegawa. You won me. You won the promise. Mutsumi wanted to see us together." Keitaro turned to face the others. "Kitsune wanted to see us together." Keitaro looked down at the crowd gathering around the clock tower. "Half the people who read the morning newspaper yesterday probably wanted to see us together." Keitaro looked back at Narusegawa and smiled. "I don't blame them. Personally, I think we make a pretty damn cute couple."  
  
Narusegawa returned Keitaro's smile, but he saw hesitation in her eyes. "Now, I can't prove anything I have told you," Keitaro explained, "but, Narusegawa, if you could come down from that ledge, we can find the answers together. I promise."  
  
Keitaro smiled as Narusegawa prepared to come down from the ledge of the clock tower. Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief. Everything seemed fine.  
  
But that feeling did not last long. Urashima Keitaro wanted in horror as Narusegawa missed her footing as she stepped down from the ledge. Keitaro stared helplessly as Narusegawa started to fall backwards over the ledge. Keitaro could feel a panic attack coming on. He resorted to Motoko's breathing lessons.  
  
/Breath in, breath out, breath in, breath out./  
  
He reached out for Narusegawa. When she fell out of arm's reach, Keitaro instinctually dove in after her. Still dressed in his tuxedo from last night, Keitaro fell faster than Narusegawa in her red dress. As Keitaro's falling body caught up with Narusegawa's, Keitaro latched on to her and flipped her over in mid-air. His back to the ground now, Keitaro landed hard with a sickening [crack].   
  
The pain washed away as soon as his eyes met Naru's. Naru seemed to enjoy this position, her on top of Keitaro. She should. It saved her life. Keitaro tried to explain that he only done this to break her fall, but Naru would not hear of it. As she leaned in for a kiss, Keitaro turned his head and coughed. Naru snapped back in revulsion. Keitaro looked confused until Naru touched his lips and showed him her fingers.  
  
"Blood!" He had coughed up blood! As Naru called out for an ambulance, Keitaro could feel himself lifted up onto Kentaro's helicopter.   
  
He heard five voices ordering him to do the same thing. "Don't die." Everything felt numb and cold. Keitaro sure hoped he would not disappoint them by doing something stupid, like dying, his last thought as everything around him descended into darkness.  
  
  
  
  
----- 


	7. Love, Hina

Disclaimer: I do not own "Love Hina" or its characters.  
  
  
  
Matchmaker's War  
Love, Hina  
  
  
  
Dear Urashima Naru,  
  
I heard about the wedding. I wish I could have came to see it, but I had trouble leaving the country of Molmol. Some group of militant socialists had toppled the ruling monarchy. It took months for the fragments of the ruling monarchy to regain control. During that time, the United Nations had pressured surrounding nations not to accept Molmolian commercial aircraft. The current ruling queen, a woman by the name of Su Kaolla, has taken the weighty task of rebuilding a nation from scratch. She has a lot of courage.   
  
Anyways, I read yesterday in an article in a medical journal about Urashima Keitaro's fall from the Tokyo University clock tower six years ago. He still has the world's leading scientists completely stumped as to how he survived the fall. It should have killed him, but he woke the following morning with nothing more serious than an empty stomach. His strength still impresses me after all these years.  
  
I also received news about the other girls at the Hinata-sou. Maehara Shinobu found a nice man and plans to marry him soon. From his picture, Miyagi Kanno looks a lot like my grandson without his glasses on. Anyways, the guy has degrees in the culinary arts and home education, so he pretty does all the cooking and cleaning for her. Shinobu doesn't mind, I heard she spends most of her time handling the duties of superintendent of the Hinata-sou, accepting new tenants into the all-girls dormitory. I praise her for her efforts.  
  
I even heard about Aoyama Motoko's upcoming marriage. When I first met her, I had different expectations of her love life than what had actually came to pass. Still, despite my old-fashioned views, I can tell she has brought happiness to one of my grandchildren, so for that I thank her.  
  
When I heard about Kitsune's going steady to that horrible Sakata Kentaro, I nearly had a heart attack and died. But, it seemed, during those six years, Sakata Kentaro had journeyed the world in a soul-searching mission. When he came back, he had very little money to his name, but his personality had grown in the absence of his horrendous wealth. Someday, I hope those two marry.  
  
Noriyasu Haruka's letters had finally reached me. Their wild-eyed six-year-old has a spirit for adventure and Sarah McDougal loves him like a brother. He has found a beautiful six-year-old named Watanabe Sora who lived in a house near the Hinata-sou. From what I gathered, the girl has to move away and little Noriyasu Hitoshi decided to make the Promise to her. Of course, this time, he will know the girl's name and remember what she looked like.   
  
In fact, I have heard people making the Promise in countries outside of Japan. I have heard a Harvard version of the Promise occurring on the east coast of the United States and a DeVry version on the west coast. The Promise had spread like a plague that needs no cure. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of young lovers have made the Promise for eternal happiness since its public revelation six years ago. It gives me a warm feeling inside.  
  
Funny, the Promise did not even exist until I created it. In fact, I wrote this letter to reveal the full truth behind the Promise, the truth that you and Keitaro have spent the last six years trying to hunt down. I needed time to arrange my thoughts on paper.  
  
I always used to play the role of the matchmaker. Before I had given birth to Haruka, I had a neighborhood reputation as an unstoppable matchmaker. I never thought anything of it. I just saw people I think belonged together and took all the barriers out of the way of their love. I got quite good at it and when I saw my grandson, I knew he would have trouble dealing with the opposite sex when he grew up. So I planned to pair him up with a daughter of a friend of mine, Otohime Mutsumi. I put the idea of the Promise in Mutsumi's head and let the mysteries of puppy love do the rest.   
  
It looked so perfect until you played that game of rock-paper-scissors and won the Promise from Mutsumi. I got angry and wanted to undo this mess, but I realized you really really wanted Keitaro, no matter what I thought to the contrary. So, I set up a plot to bring you and Keitaro together again. When your parents divorced, I got you a room at the Hinata-sou and I expected Keitaro to follow, after he graduated from Toudai. With two failures behind him, he arrived two years ahead of schedule and I panicked. In a rush, I left the Hinata-sou to his care, so he would have a reason to stay near you.   
  
Otohime Mutsumi has continued my legacy of matchmaking and has a number of suitors planned for Sarah McDougal when she reaches the right age. Will any of them work? She really does not know. Mutsumi does not seem concerned with marriage or her own happiness for that matter. It seems her only joy comes from bringing the right people together, the core assumption of any great matchmaker. But I believe she will find the right match for herself someday.  
  
Kitsune really helped a lot at the end for you two, but she merely continued the battle plan I had started twenty-one years ago. Now, with you two married and graduated from Toudai, the Promise spread throughout the world, and you pregnant with by my great-granddaughter, I can honestly say I have won the war I started twenty-one years ago against the cold inhuman workings of Fate. I have won my war, a matchmaker's war.  
  
  
Love,  
  
Hina  
  
  
  
  
----- THE END ----- 


End file.
